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Shermhead
18

Shermhead
18

Ever wondered why some drugs are legal while others remain illegal? Take marijuana as an example. It's a drug that's constantly demonized by law enforcement and banned in most countries in the world, yet it's not even near bad as some legal drugs you can buy at the store, such as spice. Spice can kill you, weed can't. I wouldn't be surprised if hardcore drugs like meth, heroin or cocaine become legalized throughout the world before pot. Cannabis was recently legalized in my state of California, so that's cool. Anyway, what do you think? Should non-lethal drugs like marijuana or LSD become legalized and should hardcore drugs like the ones you find on both the legal and illegal markets become prohibited and demonized instead? Or should everything remain the same? Debate and discuss!

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Chiarii
444

Chiarii
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Secondly, I don't believe that 'spice' was actually legal per se, but rather unregulated due to lack of knowledge about its existence. I know the DEA issued some kind of emergency ban on it several years ago. The best way to handle something like designer drugs which are molecularly tweaked to evade criminality is to outlaw the effects produced. So for instance, if a new hallucinogen came out that was chemically analogous to LSD, but not identical, it wouldn't be illegal just because LSD is illegal. So, make drug-induced hallucinations illegal and then that's a cure-all for future substances.

As for hard drugs, these are illegal for a good reason. Rarely does drug use as a crime exist without the involvement of other crimes. It's pretty standard for crack addicts to steal from others to fuel their addiction or for people who are intoxicated to either intentionally or unintentionally kill someone else. Not only that, it's unequivocally known that drugs are damaging to your own health. That alone should be a deterrent. I've never understood the argument that 'weed isn't as bad as cigarettes'. We know with certainty that smoke inhalation, whether it's a cigarette, joint, or your burning house, is damaging to health. Not just to your cardiopulmonary system, but also your vascular, skeletal, neurologic, and integumentary systems... pretty much every system in your body.

I see no good reason to legalize drug use. Unless of course, you think 'liberating the people' means getting people hopelessly hooked on drugs.

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Saggy
823

Saggy
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Secondly, I don't believe that 'spice' was actually legal per se, but rather unregulated due to lack of knowledge about its existence. I know the DEA issued some kind of emergency ban on it several years ago. The best way to handle something like designer drugs which are molecularly tweaked to evade criminality is to outlaw the effects produced. So for instance, if a new hallucinogen came out that was chemically analogous to LSD, but not identical, it wouldn't be illegal just because LSD is illegal. So, make drug-induced hallucinations illegal and then that's a cure-all for future substances.

As for hard drugs, these are illegal for a good reason. Rarely does drug use as a crime exist without the involvement of other crimes. It's pretty standard for crack addicts to steal from others to fuel their addiction or for people who are intoxicated to either intentionally or unintentionally kill someone else. Not only that, it's unequivocally known that drugs are damaging to your own health. That alone should be a deterrent. I've never understood the argument that 'weed isn't as bad as cigarettes'. We know with certainty that smoke inhalation, whether it's a cigarette, joint, or your burning house, is damaging to health. Not just to your cardiopulmonary system, but also your vascular, skeletal, neurologic, and integumentary systems... pretty much every system in your body.

I see no good reason to legalize drug use. Unless of course, you think 'liberating the people' means getting people hopelessly hooked on drugs.

I think you mean "indisputably known that drugs are damaging to your own health", and which would be incorrect. There's plenty of dispute about the actual health affect of many illicit substances, as well as legal drugs. But beside that, what bearing does their effect on our health actually have on whether they should be legal and able to be enjoyed? I'm pretty sure that eating fast food is a lot worse for you than taking most drugs, but yet we still allow people to buy McDonald's and become "hopelessly hooked" on cheeseburgers. And I'm not really trying to be cheeky, there are people with food addictions too, so how does unhealthy fast food work into your paradigm? Are we going to ban everything that's enjoyable and unhealthy? I highly doubt it, so it's an unrealistic approach to take.

Then of course there's also the use of alcohol which I assume you'd prohibit, but as far as "drug induced hallucinations" go, what about drugs that don't produce any hallucinations and are simply pain relievers or stimulants? You do realize that most people's ADD/ADHD medication is amphetamine, and that pain relievers are basically synthetic heroin? How are you supposed to address that? Ban any drug that makes you feel good or gives you energy? The line between recreational drug use and medicinal drug use is pretty blurry in most cases.

Plus as far as behavior problems with drug use such as stealing and theft, would it be as likely for people to need to steal to support their habit if the drugs were cheap and more accessible? Hint hint: It doesn't happen that way when people get addicted to prescription pain killers, i.e. opioids. Last time I filled a prescription for Vicodin, it literally cost me $.08 after my insurance covered most of it. There's nobody that's going to be robbing their grandma's TV or sucking dick for crack if you could get a bottle of it for $.08.

But I think legalization and decriminalization are different, even if in a nuanced way. The thing about legalization, such as the legalization of pot for commercial sales, is that this is going to end up basically like the liquor industry where it's still "regulated" and is not really that legal, it's just you're not going to jail if you buy the stuff at the right place. Decriminalization is different, because instead of saying, "Hey we're going to sell you these drugs," it's more like saying, "We're not going to put you into jail for having them. However, decriminalization also allows you to offer certain "incentives" to get people to quit, whereas legalization is based entirely on simply gaining on people's continued use.

Cannabis for example, I'm fine with legalization. Sell it to people, let them smoke it. Yeah it might be bad for you, but so are cheeseburgers, and so are beers. Some would say cheeseburgers and beer are worse! Meanwhile, that's what life is about, allowing people to make these kinds of choices. As long as you're not damaging other people's health by enjoying these vices, then I don't care. With the exception of alcohol, most "addictive" behaviors revolving around any activity can become problematic, so trying to determine what should be legal by how addictive it is doesn't make much sense to me. Instead it should be based on how immediately toxic it is; alcohol should probably be a little less legal in this context, but you can't make everything perfect.

But when you talk about things like heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, etc. it really starts to get into territory where you exponentially increase the likelihood that someone else is going to be adversely burdened by your drug use. Now, the biggest problem with drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine are just the dangerous and clandestine culture surrounding them, but even pretending you could get 100% clean and chemically pure forms of these drugs from a safe place, the behavior they induce can end up dangerous to people around the users. I'm not talking about things as simple as drunk driving, because that is still depending on a person making the choice to drive. However, if a person gets high on methamphetamine and hallucinates into thinking they need to set a fire in the middle of their apartment, that creates a huge public health hazard by DIRECT effect of the drug. I mean these are drugs which essentially put people into a state of mind that we would be locking up and mentally evaluating people for if they were to manifest these behaviors without drugs. Any drug that causes you to be basically legally insane temporarily, should not be something we merit for recreational use.

However, with any prohibition is going to come rule breakers, and I don't think that things like jail/prison sentences to try to effect some deterrence is helpful. It just ends up putting people through a criminal justice system that promotes recidivism, and ironically breeds its own drug trade and enhanced set of problems. The much better avenue would be to send people with drugs to rehab and treatment, so long as it's evident they're earnestly trying to get clean. If a person is just shirking the law on the other hand, punishment is more appropriate, but I don't believe simply taking or having the drugs should be punishable like a crime. It should be treated as a medical problem until it is apparent that it's a behavior problem.

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Triple Vacuum Seal
857

Triple Vacuum Seal
857

I agree that the legalization of pot is a no-brainer. Hard drugs should be illegal to sale and distribute, but the use shouldn't be a serious criminal offense per se because like Chiari pointed out, there's typically no shortage of crimes to lock fiends up for. The focus should be on treatment and prevention.

Even more so than laws dealing with sale and distribution, the legal status of using crack, heroin, and meth isn't much of a deterrent because hard drugs are addictive. Irrationally ignoring the consequences of something at a long-term expense is precisely what makes it addictive. The prohibition logic doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny before being exposed as authoritarian nonsense.

I'm for the criminalization of recreational drug use.

I'm skeptical about the consistency of this claim. Are you for criminalizing the recreational use of drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes? Or is this more of a conservative bandwagon thing?

designer drugs which are molecularly tweaked to evade criminality is to outlaw the effects produced.

Slight molecular adjustments have indeed been used to evade bans. But the idea of criminalizing all substances that cause hallucinations is utterly ridiculous and not very well thought out. Not only are hallucinations not limited to the visual sense (think auditory, corporal, olfactory, gustatory, etc.), but numerous drugs are known to cause inconsistent effects across sampled populations. And in any case, these effects, hallucinogenic or not, are dependent upon dosage. sh*t, devout people claim to "see" and "hear" God on a daily basis w/o any drugs whatsoever. They're either full of sh*t, hallucinating, or a bit of both.

So perhaps we should approach the issue by making the state response less draconian than it already is instead of digging our heals further into the failed perspective. Or better yet, instead of playing statutory gymnastics trying to regulate purely subjective drug effects, we could simply legalize marijuana and instantly crush the market for lethal alternatives sold in some smoke shops.

I've never understood the argument that 'weed isn't as bad as cigarettes'

Not sure what there is to be understood here. It's a medical fact.

We know with certainty that smoke inhalation, whether it's a cigarette, joint, or your burning house, is damaging to health. Not just to your cardiopulmonary system, but also your vascular, skeletal, neurologic, and integumentary systems... pretty much every system in your body.

But what about other methods? Any pot smoker with half a brain knows that smoking is bad for your health. This is precisely why vaporizing concentrates or flower, taking edibles, sipping the 'weed' beverages, and a range of other essentially harmless options have grown in popularity. Using pot and smoking it aren't necessarily the same thing. You can't rationally outlaw all pot use on the basis of how dangerous the latter is.

Not only that, it's unequivocally known that drugs are damaging to your own health. That alone should be a deterrent.

In regards to 'hard drugs', I agree that should be a deterrent under some utopian set of circumstances where addiction doesn't exist. But in the context of pot, the 'damage' is not inherent for many users. This is all besides the point anyway because it suggests that the negative impacts from conscious harm to one's own health is the basis for pot criminality, which it isn't.

The people who put these prohibitionist laws on the books don't give a flying f*ck about public health. They were merely dancing to the tune of lobbyists/campaign contributions. A simple historical analysis of marijuana policy reveals this reality. To think otherwise is just a heavy dose of deluded idealism.

I see no good reason to legalize drug use.

On a side note...

In regards to pot, the most compelling argument you've managed to make here is some variant of the nanny state logic, protecting people from their own vices. You've offered a weaker version of the rationale used to outlaw (or was it tax?) extra large sodas in NYC. And I don't think even you believe in this rationale that you've put forth seeing as you are supposedly a conservative who is from Texas. The pot issue is a clear example of how willing 'conservative' Texans are to abandon their small gov't. principles in favor of partisan politics.

We Texans traditionally have a minimalist attitude towards state authority. The legal status of pot here is a striking contradiction to that value...given weed's general lack of harm. It sure has killed a lot less people than legally-purchased guns.

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Chiarii
444

Chiarii
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I'm skeptical about the consistency of this claim. Are you for criminalizing the recreational use of drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes? Or is this more of a conservative bandwagon thing?

Cigarettes? Absolutely. I don't see anything wrong with taking away your privilege to give yourself cancer, emphysema, CAD, angina, MI, stroke, accelerated atherosclerosis, or the plethora of other health issues that occur from smoking. In the end, I believe smokers would thank me as not only would they have longer, higher quality lives, they wouldn't be literally burning hundreds of dollars per year.

As for alcohol, I've already said in another thread that I would, in fact, favor the banning of spirits. Again, the reason I'm putting spirits out there is that hard liquor is considerably more dangerous than beer or wine, especially to people initially experimenting with alcohol. If it was an all or nothing deal, meaning that all alcohol would have to be banned for spirits to be banned, I would support it even though I enjoy a glass of red wine with a steak, or white wine with fish, or maybe even a beer in a frozen mug to pair with a burger. It's about the greater good.

It's about cirrhosis. It's about WKS. It's about FAS. It's about hepatic encephalopathy. It's about people dying from tonic clonic seizures when they withdrawal from their alcoholism. You may very well be a responsible drinker, just like me. Many people aren't, and I'm willing to forfeit my luxury of a glass of wine at dinner if it would spare some of them from a terrible, prolonged death.

Slight molecular adjustments have indeed been used to evade bans. But the idea of criminalizing all substances that cause hallucinations is utterly ridiculous and not very well thought out. Not only are hallucinations not limited to the visual sense (think auditory, corporal, olfactory, gustatory, etc.), but numerous drugs are known to cause inconsistent effects across sampled populations. And in any case, these effects, hallucinogenic or not, are dependent upon dosage. sh*t, devout people claim to "see" and "hear" God on a daily basis w/o any drugs whatsoever. They're either full of sh*t, hallucinating, or a bit of both.

So perhaps we should approach the issue by making the state response less draconian than it already is instead of digging our heals further into the failed perspective. Or better yet, instead of playing statutory gymnastics trying to regulate purely subjective drug effects, we could simply legalize marijuana and instantly crush the market for lethal alternatives sold in some smoke shops.

I didn't feel the need to point out all the different types of hallucinations; I mentioned LSD because OP mentioned LSD. You're right, there's several different types of hallucinations and varying degrees of them. This is something I've known for years. I've also known, for years, that different people respond differently to the same drugs. For instance, there are cases in which the use of marijuana induced psychosis in people who were predisposed to it. I don't blame marijuana for that, it didn't cause it, it brought something forward that was lingering in dormancy. Still, it cannot be medically (or even logically for laymen) separated from the use of the drug. I think the last bit in this first paragraph is a bit ironic though. Yes, there are people who are naturally plagued by hallucinations without any kind of administration of chemicals. Here comes the irony: we use drugs to try to help psychiatrically stabilize these people and bring them out of their hallucinations while other people are using drugs to try to bring them on for fun. Do you see how f*cked up that is?

Lastly, this isn't the marijuana thread. It's the illicit drug thread. I'm not going to bash marijuana again and again when it's a small and insignificant part of the drug crisis in our country. I don't care if people use it, however, I'd prefer to live in a society where it isn't marketed brazenly and millions of other people would as well.

Not sure what there is to be understood here. It's a medical fact.

It is downright adorable when people try to talk medical facts to me. Yeah, it's less carcinogenic. Cancer isn't the be-all end-all of disease.

Oh, and the larger point of that excerpt you took was that X isn't a good idea just because it's less dangerous than Y.

In regards to 'hard drugs', I agree that should be a deterrent under some utopian set of circumstances where addiction doesn't exist. But in the context of pot, the 'damage' is not inherent for many users. This is all besides the point anyway because it suggests that the negative impacts from conscious harm to one's own health is the basis for pot criminality, which it isn't.

The people who put these prohibitionist laws on the books don't give a flying f*ck about public health. They were merely dancing to the tune of lobbyists/campaign contributions. A simple historical analysis of marijuana policy reveals this reality. To think otherwise is just a heavy dose of deluded idealism.

Again, we're really bringing marijuana to the forefront of drugs and I don't think it should be. I'm simply not concerned about. I am concerned about potentially giving people a free pass to get hooked on drugs which will consequently spread STIs, put more newborns on ECMO, increase crime/violent crime, and on and on and on. Somewhere along the lines this society has forgotten "drugs are bad". It's funny, drugs didn't suddenly become safe.... the general population is just becoming more ignorant.

On a side note...

In regards to pot, the most compelling argument you've managed to make here is some variant of the nanny state logic, protecting people from their own vices. You've offered a weaker version of the rationale used to outlaw (or was it tax?) extra large sodas in NYC. And I don't think even you believe in this rationale that you've put forth seeing as you are supposedly a conservative who is from Texas. The pot issue is a clear example of how willing 'conservative' Texans are to abandon their small gov't. principles in favor of partisan politics.

We Texans traditionally have a minimalist attitude towards state authority. The legal status of pot here is a striking contradiction to that value...given weed's general lack of harm. It sure has killed a lot less people than legally-purchased guns.

I am financially conservative and I am from TX. I'm also someone with a sound understanding of an array of pathologies. I'm also a person of morals and values. I'm someone who understands that many people don't know what's in their own best interest, and I'm not someone with an infatuation with guns (so that appeal means nothing to me as I agree with it).

I want people to not become addicted to drugs. I want people to have long, high-quality lives, and we both know that drug addicts will have shorter, low-qualityy lives. So, I want your access to life destroying drugs eliminated. Is that so bad? Is the freedom to destroy your life (and honestly, the lives of those who love you) really that important?

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DareYokel
6,238

DareYokel
6,238

Prohibition doesn't work. The failure of alcohol prohibition should have been enough for people to get a hint, but people tend to be stupid, so of course now there's a war on drugs, and millions of brainwashed idiots still clinging to the idea that one of these days it's going to start showing positive results.

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DOUGL4S1
5,752

DOUGL4S1
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What people forget is that some people won't stop something because it became illegal. If the Alcohol ban taught us something is that banning alcohol, ironically made alcohol as popular as ever, and there were entire cartels formed around distributing illegal moonshine. Things that are seen as tabboos can attract the curiosity of people, which can make even more people addicts. Ironically, a way to help people in that situation could be legalization, where actual groups and companies to help people in these conditions would emerge, instead of people trying to arrest them for any reason.

However, legalization has an immediate negative effect: With something that was once a tabboo now fo easily accessible to everyone, we would see an increase in users, mostly, oce again, because of curiosity. Las Vegas ran out of weed the week it was legalized, for example. I said immediate because with time, we'd get used to buying them legally in most places, and people who were curious about it would've already experimented, and people who don't will just continue ignoring the weed isle in the market.

Now, to make it clear, I'm talking about light drugs. No, I don't think we should legalize Crack or Speed or something, but legalizing weed could be done in the interests of the plant's medicinal and relaxing side-effects. Just because a plant that can be smoked was legalized doesn't mean everyone will go out on the streets smoking a 2-foot long blunt or something, but there will be people trying to experiment with it, like making tea (that I heard was a thing) or trying to find a way to implement it into normal cousine.

And Chi, you can't 'help' people by outlawing something they're addicted to. No need to look further than the prohibition, as I said. Outlawing alcohol nowadays would not only coast millions of jobs in factories, farms, bars, wine cellars, liquor stores, etc, but it would also have no effect on the people you're trying to help. It's not easy to end an addiction, and if people are addicted to something that's now illegal, they'll sooner or later give up and go after what makes them feel good. Congratulations, you just made millions of people unemployed, caused thousands of factories and stores to close, lost millions of dollars in taxes and created various huge cartels, just to "help" people, even tho they're still addicted.

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Triple Vacuum Seal
857

Triple Vacuum Seal
857

Again, we're really bringing marijuana to the forefront of drugs and I don't think it should be. I'm simply not concerned about...

Of course you aren't concerned about pot. In spite of its rather marginal threat to public health, pot's legal treatment is where the policy failure of modern prohibition is the most evident. It's an eyesore for any prohibitionist who is trying to be taken seriously.

So considering how you mentioned pot in your first post and it's the point of contention, I don't see what's wrong with calling out baseless anti-pot dogma. We can refrain from discussing pot if you can refrain from overstating it's danger or mentioning it all really.

Lastly, this isn't the marijuana thread. It's the illicit drug thread. I'm not going to bash marijuana again and again when it's a small and insignificant part of the drug crisis in our country.

Sure. Let's not turn this into a D.A.R.E. program thread either. No one here's denying the damaging effects of irresponsible drug use. This thread is specifically about the legal status of drugs across a spectrum. It's not like pot's legal status is the most relevant and controversial topic in current drug policy or anything.

I also generally avoid pot debates because it's a no-brainer and those who oppose its legalization are typically unable to be convinced by evidence anyway. This was merely a matter of convenience.

I'm not going to bash marijuana again and again....I don't care if people use it, however, I'd prefer to live in a society where it isn't marketed brazenly and millions of other people would as well.

I agree. Products in general shouldn't be marketed brazenly tbh.

Legalizing the relatively harmless drugs is not some blanket endorsement of drug abuse. When did we start needing the gov't to tell us how to think?

....As for alcohol, I've already said in another thread that I would, in fact, favor the banning of spirits.

Well at least your principle here is consistent unlike most prohibitionists. Fair enough. Perhaps we could try a more paternalistic approach to regulating simple vices. History shows that it tends to backfire nonetheless.

I'm willing to forfeit my luxury of a glass of wine at dinner if it would spare some of them from a terrible, prolonged death.

But it won't. It's best we don't pretend that prohibition will spare them. Prohibition has failed to serve the public...again. Now that its folly has been well-documented, do you really want to give this prohibition shtick another go around just to uphold a set of comfortable false assumptions at the public's expense?

You listing off health conditions isn't going to change the fact that prohibition has been a moronic policy failure yet again.

Somewhere along the lines this society has forgotten "drugs are bad". It's funny, drugs didn't suddenly become safe...

The sky isn't falling. We all know that hard drugs are damaging. People are just tired of getting shat on by the legal system for possessing harmless plants.

And by the way, I can't quite grasp how a glass of wine with a steak dinner is radically different from say....a few modest drags on a weed vaporizer before a feast. Moderate responsible pot, LSD, and psilocybin use is widespread, and you steady denyin it. You've demonstrated unswerving support for a failed prohibition agenda. Unless you've been thoroughly indoctrinated, there's no need to overthink this silly little set of policies.

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Shermhead
18

Shermhead
18

we all know the DEA is a f*cking joke. instead of going after hard and deadly man-made drugs, they go after harmless plants grown from the ground that make you laugh and eat a lot. because flipping your sh*t on meth and stealing anything you can is much better than a relaxing and innocent high...

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DOUGL4S1
5,752

DOUGL4S1
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we all know the DEA is a f*cking joke. instead of going after hard and deadly man-made drugs, they go after harmless plants grown from the ground that make you laugh and eat a lot. because flipping your sh*t on meth and stealing anything you can is much better than a relaxing and innocent high...

The DEA does its job, and it does its job the easy way, like most of us would.

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DOUGL4S1
5,752

DOUGL4S1
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The DEA does its job, and it does its job the easy way, like most of us would.

And your posts here are kinda funny with your Ryder profile pic...

But the DEA can do a way better job.

And your posts here are pretty funny with your profile picture too, considering Guns n Roses was a band (like most) that did all types of hard drugs...

At least here in Brazil there's a place where a literal street market with tables and stores full of drugs happen, and the local "DEA" there only aprehended 10 grams of drugs in an entire month, so It's pretty obvious there's a lot of money under the table.

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Saggy
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Saggy
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One thing that I think should be pointed out in this argument is that the scheduling of drugs for "medicinal use" often times breaks down too. When you look at synthetic opioids, that started off with great intent to help solve patient pain, and what it boiled down to was people getting cheap and unfettered access to what is essentially synthetic heroin.

Now, the knee jerk reaction for most is to blame the doctors, thinking they just hand these things out to any old addict without even thinking about the repercussions. Well, there's actually two things at play 1). It is actually a patient right for pain relief, so to not offer some kind of pain relief would open a doctor up to litigation and 2). The pharmaceutical companies who produced these drugs also produced tons of bunk science misleading doctors about the addictive potential of these synthetic opioids.

SO why is this important to bring up? Because if you look at drug overdose trends in the U.S. then what you find is that even with legal, prescribed drugs, there were 15,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2015. There are still more drug overdose deaths from illicit drugs, but the other side of this coin is the shear amount of prescriptions for these opioid pain killers written versus the deaths caused. I'd have to go dig up the sources, but basically there's enough prescriptions in the U.S. to supply every adult man and woman with a 1 month supply. We can't really track how many illicit overdose deaths were indirectly led to by a prescription to legal opiates, but overall it would seem to show that Americans can tolerate the health hazards of what are basically legal analogues of the same illegal substances which are seen as so dangerous. When HUNDREDS of millions of Americans a year are taking these medications, and only 15k are dying on them, that's actually a margin that's pretty in-line with other such margins we seem to find acceptable. For example, hundreds of millions of drivers in America, and only 29k traffic-accident related fatalities

Still, despite the legality and clinical safety of these drugs, they are still killing thousands of people year after year. Even when doctors are careful not to prescribe to potential addicts, these drugs are still making their way to addicts through drug diversion. If you look at the first link provided, you can see that most people report their source of the drug as a friend with a prescription rather than having an actual prescription themselves. So the idea that many of these deaths were from "legal" opioids is a bit flawed, but also shows that trying to keep dangerous chemicals restricted to doctor-approved individuals is a little naive.

Now while this is all a grim look at our nation's opioid problem, and we definitely need to work to solve this crisis, it's interesting to note that the deaths from illicit heroin are only slightly higher in terms of raw volume, but are skyrocketing much faster in terms of their upward trend.

One has to ask, "Why the sudden surge in heroin deaths?" and the answer most researchers are concluding is that the waning accessibility to legal prescription opioids ( which are coming under fire consistently more since 2008 ) are driving people addicted to those substances to heroin. Many people are worried that continuing to restrict access to the prescription opioids will continue to drive this upward trend of heroin use and overdose.

Where most researchers are pretty much totally agreed upon is that what is needed most is better access to treatment and healthcare options. For as many doctors are there are prescribing opioid pain medications, there's actually not even a law that requires them to be counseled on the dangers and risks of certain patients of developing an addiction. Past that, you have an entire industry that offers lucrative incentives for doctors to prescribe these medications, yet there are no such lucrative incentives for recommending a patient to drug treatment. Even if there were, the likelihood that insurance would cover it is slim to none, whereas opioid pain medications are the number one insurance-backed medical expenditure for chronic pain sufferers. In other words, there's no money in NOT getting people hooked on these pills, and so alternative treatments are usually that much more costly and inaccessible for the patient.

Even with a drug you can make somewhat safe, in a clinical sense, and that you can provide legal access to, there are still going to be the problems of addiction and overdose. It draws into question the government's own qualifications on determining which drugs are safer than others, but most of all it points out that, by a large margin, the most needed intervention strategy for drug use in the U.S. is treatment, and without more access to treatment all strategies (legalization, decriminalization, prohibition) are going to fail.

It doesn't necessarily fit the model exactly, but prescription pain killers are about the closest thing we have to a legalized "hard drug". We've attempted to legalize them for medicinal purposes rather than recreational, and the resulting side-effects are kind of hard to really track to one cause or the other. For example, some would say they've increased use of illicit heroin, while others would say that it was directly the sudden lack of accessibility that caused that turn to illicit heroin.

Either way what seems apparent is that whether these substances are legalized for medicinal or recreational purposes, and whether they lead to their own acute overdose deaths or such on an illicit substance, the true need in America is for accessible treatment options to prevent all of these outcomes. The fact that we could have so many prescriptions to these drugs filled, but with relatively few deaths ( again when comparing to something like traffic fatalities ) suggests to me that with a little bit more investment in treatment options then most other drugs could be legalized in this kind of setting too.

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Mister Pink
10,792

Mister Pink
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I'm for decriminalizing drugs. I think the war on drugs is a total catastrophe. In the U.S. you can get mandatory 20 year sentences for non-violent drug offences. This isn't rehabilitative. This is just punishment for more unseen underlying issues. People seek refuge is drugs for a lot of reasons and it can be "self-medication" for things like depression, anxiety, feelings of no self-control, bad-upbringing and inability to overcome problems in a more constructive way.

I'm not saying legalizing drugs is the answer but decriminalizing them and favoring rehabilitation over punishment, to me, seems more sound that tossing people in to the prison system, losing their right to vote in the U.S., then being hard to adjust outside, find a job etc. You're just going to continue on the same path without treatment for the root cause. But the prison industry good business so the war of drugs is good for the current status quo.

This conversation will inevitably bring up Portugal, which is seemingly the success story for decriminalizing class A drugs. Drug use and abuse isn't taboo like it once was, so there's public discourse and awareness. Yes, we're all told drugs are bad as kids, but then when you actually do them and you realize, hey, they're not as bad as I was led to believe (in moderation) then one may lose respect for "Drugs are bad" brigade because they've been mostly dishonest about drugs use due to it's illegality. Then people look to their peers. Whereas if the state and the public perception and awareness provides an open forum, the next generation can be better informed, in my opinion.

I'll try to find the study but in Portugal I read that the percentage of kids willing to experiment with illegal drugs dropped significantly since drugs were decriminalized back in 2001, I think. They believe this down to information being available and drug-use not being pushed underground but talked about and cared for in a more public and open way.

Hardline approaches against drug use don't work. People will still always find away to medicate, escape reality or responsibility or even to recreationally enjoy or even out of curiosity which is arguably the majority of drug users.

This article mentions how heroin addiction in Portugal has been halved since decriminalization. Also, studies show that tough drug laws don't act as a deterrent. I was going to post a Guardian article but for balance, here's an article from a right-leaning British newspaper that discusses the findings of that study.

“We did not in our fact-finding observe any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country,” the report said. It is a hugely counter-intuitive finding – common sense suggests that if the threat of punishment hangs over something, people will be less willing to do it. But, in the 11 countries studied, that does not seem to be the case.

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Caysle
1,752

Caysle
1,752

It is absolutely ridicilous to put some guy next to a killer or rapist in prison just because he/she used cannabis. Not to mention War On Drugs failed so miserably that you've only created more cartels than the ones you brought down

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Triple Vacuum Seal
857

Triple Vacuum Seal
857

The broader aspects of this policy debate are a no-brainer, but I'd like to leave this video here. It's that rare occasion when the right-wing economist Milton Friedman makes an entirely agreeable policy recommendation.

ilovebender.com
133

ilovebender.com
133

Because of Scotland's spending habit which includes safe rooms for junkies; as forward thinking backward looking as Scotland are (anyone who wishes to remain in the EU is living in the past, so, backward looking); means they can't afford independence and the SNP would bring about a worst austerity than any Tory ever could if the SNP got their way.

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sivispacem
20,599

sivispacem
20,599

as forward thinking backward looking as Scotland are (anyone who wishes to remain in the EU is living in the past, so, backward looking); means they can't afford independence and the SNP would bring about a worst austerity than any Tory ever could if the SNP got their way.

Come on Bobby, we're supposed to be talking about drugs, remember?

If you can't keep on topic I'm going to have to start removing your posts again.

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Tyler
5,811

Tyler
5,811

Banning drugs in an attempt to stop drug use is similar to teaching abstinence only for sex education. The kind of people who fall to the way of addiction are not going to be steered by law enforcement wagging a finger. Thus, the only options you have are to try and comfort them and rehabilitate them so that they can find a way out of that black hole, or let them die. Either you fund programs for drug education, safe use of things like needles, shelters, free STI testing, etc. Or you continue to ignore the problem and allow people to die on the street. There is no middle ground here. You are either someone who cares enough to let some of your tax dollars go towards rehabilitating members of society, or you would rather spend that money on some dumb sh*t like new assault rifles for special forces while hundreds of your compatriots freeze to death downtown.

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oliviams
0

oliviams
0

Im for legalization CBD in all world. I just finish a CBD sweet and honestly it feel like I just smoked a reggie stick. Reggie dont get me high but it does relaxes me and thats how the CBD sweet felt. Usually buy in https://berkshirecbd.com/shop/cbd-flower/.